Animal rights extremists target senior judges

Special Branch officers have launched an investigation into a campaign of harassment by animal activists against two senior High Court judges.

The Animal Liberation Front (ALF) is using a website to appeal to members to target the judges – who The Lawyer has chosen not to identify – as well as their mothers and mothers-in-law. Home addresses and phone numbers are also provided.

The judges are being targeted after granting interim injunction orders stopping the activists from targeting certain companies. Lawyers who won the injunctions are also being targeted.

According to a lawyer who is a former anarchist, the ALF is likely to “use the information on the website and carry out an autonomous action, including making harassing phone calls and pouring paint stripper over cars parked in the driveways of the addresses mentioned on the website”.

In the US the companies granted injunctions by the English judges have been pipe bombed.

The Department for Constitutional Affairs said: “We’re aware of the website and are liaising with the police.” Superintendent Steve Pearl of the Special Branch’s ‘animal activists’ secretariat is investigating the website’s operators.

Activists are also targeting the offices and staff of Lawson Cruttenden & Co, a specialist anti-harassment practice, which recently represented companies, including Huntington Life Sciences and Bayer, which were seeking injunctions on harassment by animal activists.